A top aide to Rep. Eric Cantor left his job at the Capitol this week to help former Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.) spearhead a new organization that will mobilize center-right voters in advance of November’s midterms.

Rob Collins, who has been the House Minority Whip’s deputy chief of staff, will be executive director of the American Action Network, when it officially launches toward the end of February.

A group of Republican operatives from the Hill, along with a few other reporters, gathered Wednesday night at Cantor’s invitation to send Collins off to his new job with Coleman.

“The Republican stock is going way up and we have bright young hardworking people like Rob this year trying to make sure we maximize the advantage of this atmosphere,” said former Louisiana Rep. Jim McCrery.

“We are trying to make it a movement where everyone feels comfortable,” Collins told POLITICO last night. “What people are worried about we are going to talk about.”

The advocacy organization will operate in conjunction with a non-profit think tank called the American Action Forum, which former Congressional Budget Office director Douglas Holtz-Eakin will lead.

In a clear signal that he intends to reclaim a higher profile in the national Republican arena after he lost his reelection-turned-recount battle last year to Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.), Coleman will be the political face of the group. Fred Malek, one of the GOP’s biggest money men, is co-founding the organizations.

Coleman is making the rounds to tout what he's portraying as a conservative counterpart to the Center for American Progress.

“We believe America is a center-right nation, and what we’re going to be about is mobilizing people with center-right concepts and then converting those concepts into action,” Coleman told FoxNews.com on Wednesday. “And I think by the way the left does that better.”

Officials have said that there’s a plan to have a staff of four or five by mid-March and then grow closer to the elections.